Entry tags:
Sad Girl in Snow, or the Gaijin Barber of Sleet Street
No, not really. But WTF, it's snowing in Tokyo again:
Snowy Shinjuku Station
Ohtori's ramen shop, all steamed up.
Sun Road, or more like, Snow Road.
Near the station.
Warabi Station tracks.
So, Shinsuke did call me this morning! Yay! We talked on the phone for an hour or so debating what the hell to do -- and decided we definitely were NOT going to Setsubun because it would be retarded to stand outside in the snow and throw beans or whatever. Instead, we decided to go see Sweeney Todd, somewhere in Shinjuku. It was showing at 2pm and 4:30pm and so we just decided to meet up "sometime before 2". I guess I got there around 1:30 and found Shin at the station. I think he forgot what I look like because we hadn't hung out in 3 months.
Shin had already gone to the theater and gotten tickets to the 4:30 movie, so we decided to waste time around Shinjuku until then. Stopped by Yodobashi games so he could get some DS puzzle game, but I still don't have a DS and still don't know if I'll get one. (I looked at a lot of tempting games though.) Then we went to some place called Negishi for lunch, because I had requested "warm food". It's kind of like a yakiniku place only you don't grill the meat yourself, you order a rice set with it, or some story like that. They also have Japanese-style beef stew, which is what Shin recommended to me to try, and it was pretty dang good, and warm. We hung out there for a while talking about random crap. I don't think he really understands how much I enjoy talking to him, just having another CMU CS geek to chat with here. Shin is doubly cool for actually knowing what I'm talking about when it's anything from sports to trains to Perl to whatever, too.
(Which reminds me, I really need to bug![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibash...)
Anyway, after a few more stops wandering around Shinjuku, we went to the movie. It was... bloody. I actually pretty much started closing my eyes after the first few big bloody scenes. Even though it was very fake-bloody, I still just didn't want to see them, I guess. But a lot of it was good. I don't think Miss Lovett should have been nearly as FREAKY as she was from the get-go, and I was sort of thrown off by the songs/parts they cut out of the production (notablypiratelemur's favorite line ever, "This one's made of Rear Admiral!" "...with or without his Privates?", which I even told Shin about later, and he said "Maybe they didn't think it was an appropriate line for the audience?" and I'm like "Hello, blood?" and he's like "Oh. Duh. Hmm.") But overall I guess as far as it being a Tim Burton Movie, it was pretty good for being Sweeney Todd. Or something. I also got to make fun of Shin for having to actually read the Japanese subtitles during some of the faster songs because he couldn't catch all the words. Good times.
One funny thing is that we'd been discussing the differences between Japanese humor and American humor during lunch, and I was saying that I think the humor also gets lost in translation. So sure enough NOBODY in the theater is laughing at the funnier lines in the movie, except the two guys sitting behind us. After the lights came on, sure enough, one was a gaijin. We were all like "English FTW!"
After the movie, Shin dragged me to the big Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, which I hadn't been to before (apparently the 8-story Kino in Shinjuku that I usually go to is the "small" one), and we looked around at the foreign books section. Shin leafed through some German books and I leafed through some Neurobiology books. No, really. I was looking up all that stuff about Sarin and Acetylcholine and all for my Passages students. Then, when I was looking through some JLPT 2-kyuu books, Shin was quizzing me on some kanji readings and I was totally screwing them up and he was making fun of me. I guess I deserved that. I'm SO doomed.
By then it was 8pm, so he headed home. I headed to west Ikebukuro and ate kaitensushi at my favorite place there, and it was fantastic as always. Then I stopped in Akabane to pick up my work clothes from GEOS -- I'd left them there during the party last night -- and I ended up sorting out some papers and folders too. Played some Pop'n at the Warabi arcade on my way home, and now here I am! Wheeeee.
Pretty good day! I hope I get to see Shin again sometime after he gets back from GDC. It'll allllmost be time for baseball season by then...
EDIT> oh, brief thing I forgot. When I was riding the train into town this morning, at Kawaguchi a Japanese guy got on the train and sat down next to me, and he said, in Spanish, "do you speak Spanish?" and I replied, in Spanish, "no, I don't speak Spanish, sorry." then I repeated it in Japanese. So he said in English, "oh, I thought you looked European, maybe Spanish or Italian?" and I said "nah, sorry, I'm American." He's going to study abroad for a year in England, so he's working on his English. But, I had to exit the train at the next stop, which was a shame. I so rarely get to talk to interesting random strangers in this stupid country, and when I do, it always seems that I have to leave the conversation for various reasons.
Snowy Shinjuku Station
Ohtori's ramen shop, all steamed up.
Sun Road, or more like, Snow Road.
Near the station.
Warabi Station tracks.
So, Shinsuke did call me this morning! Yay! We talked on the phone for an hour or so debating what the hell to do -- and decided we definitely were NOT going to Setsubun because it would be retarded to stand outside in the snow and throw beans or whatever. Instead, we decided to go see Sweeney Todd, somewhere in Shinjuku. It was showing at 2pm and 4:30pm and so we just decided to meet up "sometime before 2". I guess I got there around 1:30 and found Shin at the station. I think he forgot what I look like because we hadn't hung out in 3 months.
Shin had already gone to the theater and gotten tickets to the 4:30 movie, so we decided to waste time around Shinjuku until then. Stopped by Yodobashi games so he could get some DS puzzle game, but I still don't have a DS and still don't know if I'll get one. (I looked at a lot of tempting games though.) Then we went to some place called Negishi for lunch, because I had requested "warm food". It's kind of like a yakiniku place only you don't grill the meat yourself, you order a rice set with it, or some story like that. They also have Japanese-style beef stew, which is what Shin recommended to me to try, and it was pretty dang good, and warm. We hung out there for a while talking about random crap. I don't think he really understands how much I enjoy talking to him, just having another CMU CS geek to chat with here. Shin is doubly cool for actually knowing what I'm talking about when it's anything from sports to trains to Perl to whatever, too.
(Which reminds me, I really need to bug
alibash...) Anyway, after a few more stops wandering around Shinjuku, we went to the movie. It was... bloody. I actually pretty much started closing my eyes after the first few big bloody scenes. Even though it was very fake-bloody, I still just didn't want to see them, I guess. But a lot of it was good. I don't think Miss Lovett should have been nearly as FREAKY as she was from the get-go, and I was sort of thrown off by the songs/parts they cut out of the production (notably
piratelemur's favorite line ever, "This one's made of Rear Admiral!" "...with or without his Privates?", which I even told Shin about later, and he said "Maybe they didn't think it was an appropriate line for the audience?" and I'm like "Hello, blood?" and he's like "Oh. Duh. Hmm.") But overall I guess as far as it being a Tim Burton Movie, it was pretty good for being Sweeney Todd. Or something. I also got to make fun of Shin for having to actually read the Japanese subtitles during some of the faster songs because he couldn't catch all the words. Good times. One funny thing is that we'd been discussing the differences between Japanese humor and American humor during lunch, and I was saying that I think the humor also gets lost in translation. So sure enough NOBODY in the theater is laughing at the funnier lines in the movie, except the two guys sitting behind us. After the lights came on, sure enough, one was a gaijin. We were all like "English FTW!"
After the movie, Shin dragged me to the big Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, which I hadn't been to before (apparently the 8-story Kino in Shinjuku that I usually go to is the "small" one), and we looked around at the foreign books section. Shin leafed through some German books and I leafed through some Neurobiology books. No, really. I was looking up all that stuff about Sarin and Acetylcholine and all for my Passages students. Then, when I was looking through some JLPT 2-kyuu books, Shin was quizzing me on some kanji readings and I was totally screwing them up and he was making fun of me. I guess I deserved that. I'm SO doomed.
By then it was 8pm, so he headed home. I headed to west Ikebukuro and ate kaitensushi at my favorite place there, and it was fantastic as always. Then I stopped in Akabane to pick up my work clothes from GEOS -- I'd left them there during the party last night -- and I ended up sorting out some papers and folders too. Played some Pop'n at the Warabi arcade on my way home, and now here I am! Wheeeee.
Pretty good day! I hope I get to see Shin again sometime after he gets back from GDC. It'll allllmost be time for baseball season by then...
EDIT> oh, brief thing I forgot. When I was riding the train into town this morning, at Kawaguchi a Japanese guy got on the train and sat down next to me, and he said, in Spanish, "do you speak Spanish?" and I replied, in Spanish, "no, I don't speak Spanish, sorry." then I repeated it in Japanese. So he said in English, "oh, I thought you looked European, maybe Spanish or Italian?" and I said "nah, sorry, I'm American." He's going to study abroad for a year in England, so he's working on his English. But, I had to exit the train at the next stop, which was a shame. I so rarely get to talk to interesting random strangers in this stupid country, and when I do, it always seems that I have to leave the conversation for various reasons.
no subject
Japan is a "stupid country"? O_O
Everything I know is wrong? Black is white, up is down, and short is long?
P.S. I'm screwed as of this moment too (http://tadzilla.livejournal.com/110074.html).